Manchester United's Struggles Continue as Chelsea Dominates

The slide has been coming. Now it feels unavoidable.

Manchester United, once the WSL’s great climbers under Marc Skinner, are staring down from the very bottom of the table, and the drop looks steep. The club that lifted its first major trophy in 2024 and reached a Champions League quarter-final at the first attempt is suddenly unrecognisable. The platform that seemed built for the next step now looks like it’s crumbling under their feet.

Skinner has gone. The momentum has gone with him.

United sit rock bottom of the Women’s Super League with an uglier goal difference than newly promoted Charlton. After years of careful construction, this is a team in reverse, and the numbers are damning. They are on their longest winless league run since reforming in 2018 – six games without a victory – and the first two outings of this campaign have exposed far more than early-season rust.

Two games. Two bruising lessons. A 5-0 dismantling by Chelsea that stripped away any illusions about where this team is.

Eva Olid has walked into a storm, not created one. She inherited the squad. She inherited the problems. But the brutality of the start to her tenure has piled pressure on her shoulders almost instantly.

“I don't like the heads down. Heads up and we have to continue,” she said after that thrashing by Chelsea. It sounded like defiance. It also sounded like a manager already aware of how little margin for error she has.

She has every right to ask how much support she is really getting.

United’s on-pitch fragility mirrors a wider uncertainty around the club’s commitment to their women’s programme. The shift this summer towards promoting youth and stepping back from recruiting established, top-tier talent was presented as a strategic choice. It also coincided with Skinner’s exit, officially labelled a mutual separation, but underpinned by his very public desire for greater resources. Those calls, you suspect, met a firm ceiling.

The scale of the task facing Olid is now impossible to dress up. United have equalled the record for fewest shots taken by a non-newly promoted side across their first two games of a WSL season, level with Leicester last year. Leicester went down.

This is not just about losing to Chelsea again. United have now failed in all 14 attempts to beat them in the WSL, and this latest defeat felt like a continuation of a long, bleak pattern: United do not beat Chelsea.

They do not usually lose by five, though. That is the jarring part. The solid base Skinner had built, the sense of a side that could at least compete with the division’s elite, now looks fragile. Next up is Arsenal, live on Sky Sports next Saturday, and the list of things that need fixing is so long it’s hard to know where Olid even starts.

What she cannot afford is for performances to sink any lower. The table already says enough.

Chelsea’s response: wounded, then ruthless

On the other side of the scoreline, Chelsea’s reaction told its own story.

This was not just three points. It was a statement. Sonia Bompastor’s side had been criticised for failing to kill off Aston Villa in a 1-1 draw on the opening weekend. They had control, but not the edge. Against United, they brought the edge back with interest.

They met a fragile opponent, yes, but their intensity and precision were still striking. Bompastor summed it up simply: “When you have the opportunity to really hurt a team, the best way to respect them is to score as many goals as you can.”

Chelsea showed no mercy. No easing off. No charity. It was the strong feasting on the weak, a cold demonstration of what an elite side looks like when it smells vulnerability.

Lauren James again sat at the heart of it. She remains Chelsea’s cheat code, the player who bends games to her will. This time, though, she had a supporting cast operating at her level.

The game ran through Keira Walsh, who dictated the tempo. Sjoeke Nusken and Wieke Kaptein imposed themselves in the duels, snapping into challenges and setting a platform. Out wide, full-backs Katie McCabe and Ellie Carpenter constantly surged beyond, stretching the pitch and carving out the central lanes James thrives in. From deeper, Lucy Bronze stepped out from centre-back to slide passes into the final third, feeding the forwards early.

James made it all stick. She has already racked up 19 shots across two games – more than anyone else in the league – and looks increasingly comfortable as a false 9 when required. It gives Bompastor a powerful emergency option if injuries or form hit her recognised strikers.

She will need to be careful, though. That particular escape route cannot become a weekly crutch. Better sides than this current version of United will ask harder questions of Chelsea’s structure if James is repeatedly asked to carry the attacking burden alone.

Those tests are coming quickly. Arsenal await next, then Lyon in the Champions League. Neither will be as accommodating as United.

Stanway’s new dimension for Arsenal

Away from the drama at the top and bottom, one performance quietly shifted the landscape elsewhere.

Georgia Stanway has returned to the WSL looking like a player upgraded by her time at Bayern Munich. Her energy and bite were always there; her passing range has gone up a level.

On her Arsenal debut she completed 98 passes. Across the opening two rounds of fixtures, only Liverpool centre-back Grace Fisk has completed more than her total of 194. The detail matters: 91 of those passes have gone into the final third, comfortably the highest in the league.

That kind of precision changes what Arsenal can be.

They are no longer so reliant on Mariona Caldentey as the sole central creator. Stanway is already sharing that burden, carving out four chances against Crystal Palace alone – more than enough for the Gunners to have found a breakthrough.

Alessia Russo was unusually wasteful with what came her way. The finishing misfired. The supply line did not.

If Stanway keeps threading those passes and Arsenal’s forwards rediscover their usual edge, United’s next opponents might be the ones who expose just how deep this current spiral really runs.